by Dan Rix
“Yeah, and I’m dealing with it,” I said.
“This is bigger than you, Leona. We have to get help.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but what you’re going through is hard enough.” I adjusted my hands on the steering wheel, my palms sweaty on the grip. “You shouldn’t be worrying about me. I just wanted you to know she’s not your sister.”
“I know she’s not my sister,” he said. “My sister’s dead. So now there’s you, and you’re sitting right in front of me, and you’re telling me there’s something out there trying to kill you. At least call the police . . . for me.”
“Will you stop acting like I’m important to you?” I said. “I’m not.”
I felt his gaze burning the side of my face. “You’re not important to me, huh?” he said, his voice tight. “Is that what makes this easier for you? Pretending I don’t care about you?”
I detested the way his comment made my heart speed up. I brushed my hair aside and looked at him, and my cheeks heated under his stare. “That’s what you told her. You said, ‘I don’t care about her.’ That’s what you said, Emory . . . She told me you said that.”
I waited for him to deny it, but he didn’t.
“Yeah, I did,” he said. “Sometimes you lie to people thinking it’s the right thing to do.”
His words left me in a dumb stupor.
“Leona, call the police,” he growled.
“And tell them someone invisible is trying to kill me? They’re never going to believe me.”
They’re going to know I killed her.
“I’m going to tell my dad,” he said. “If they’re collecting this stuff, he has to know what it is. You need his help.”
“I can’t, Emory.”
“So you want to die?”
“I can’t let him help me. I can’t let you help me. I can’t let your mom help me . . . because I don’t deserve any of your help. Don’t ask why, you’re never going to understand. I mean, you will someday, but not now. And I’m not just saying this because I’m some stupid emo girl who hates herself. I’m serious. Whatever this is, I have to face it alone.” I pulled up to the curb alongside a throng of people. “Now go. I’ll be fine.”
He stared at me, his eyes hard. “When someone says that, fine is usually the last thing they’re going to be. But I get it, you’re not the kind of girl that I can ride in like a knight and save, and that scares the crap out of me because that’s all I want to do. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.” He unlatched the door and opened it a few inches. “Call me tonight so I know you’re okay.”
I nodded, feeling a rising unease. My secrets were spilling out and causing ripple effects. Soon they’d be able to see right through me.
“Say it,” he said, pushing the door open a little more. “Say you’ll call me.”
“I’ll call you,” I said, knowing it was a lie.
“It’s just you she’s after?” said Megan, sitting me down on her bed. “Or is it both of us?”
I shook my head. “Just me. She didn’t say your name.”
“So why aren’t you already dead?” she said. “If I was invisible, I could off someone so fast. I’d make a knife invisible, and then I’d sneak up on them, and then stab, stab, stab . . . dead.”
I shot her a glare.
“Seriously, why are you still alive?” she said.
“Because I was invisible too,” I spat. “I ran straight home and locked all the doors. Maybe she even got inside, I don’t know. She wouldn’t have known I was there. So now she’s biding her time and waiting to attack when I least expect it.”
“You’re not invisible now,” she said.
“Oh, did you just notice?” I said.
“Do you want my help or not?”
“No, I want you to sit by and do nothing while she hunts me down. What do you think?”
Megan rolled up her long sleeves and poked at something on her forearm. “Your attitude isn’t helping.”
“Sorry.” I bit my nails, eyes darting to the door and her windows. I’d gone straight to Megan’s house after talking to Emory, since I didn’t feel safe in mine. “She could be here right now,” I whispered.
Suddenly, goosebumps broke out on my skin.
I jumped up and jiggled the doorknob, still locked, then darted around the bedroom, swinging my arms through the air, reaching out and grasping handfuls of air.
“She’s not here,” said Megan. “We already checked.”
“The back of the closet!” I slid back the mirror and stared at the row of hanging garments, gently swinging. Why were they swinging? Heart pounding, I yanked out hangers and tossed them over my shoulder, scraping my nails along the back wall.
“Leona . . . Leona! Stop!” She took me by the shoulders and hauled me, shaking, back to the bed.
Under the bed.
I dropped to the floor and swiped underneath the bed. But I couldn’t reach the back. If someone was lying flat against the wall . . .
“Leona . . . Leona . . .” She lifted me back into a sitting position and her face appeared in front of me. “There’s no one else in the room.”
“No one else in the room,” I repeated, nodding.
“We already checked twice, so unless she can walk through walls—”
My eyes widened. “Megan . . . Megan,” I grabbed her arm, “last time I wore dark matter, my hand passed right through a door. It only happened once, but what if . . . what if . . . ?” I swallowed the sticky feeling in my throat, unable to voice the thought. My eyes darted around again with renewed paranoia.
“Yeah, that’s happened to me before,” she said, studying her arm again. “Just little things, though. Like I’ll try to pick something up, and the first time it’s just air.”
“Why does it do that?” I said.
“You mean dark matter?”
“I mean, that’s what’s doing it, right? It’s making it so you can’t see us or touch us.”
“Huh.” Megan rubbed her arm and rolled her sleeves back down to her wrist, distracted.
I fell into morbid silence. If Ashley could walk through walls, then I was already dead. No, Megan was right. The fact that I was still alive meant Ashley probably couldn’t walk through walls. Otherwise, she would have been inside my house waiting for me this morning, and she would have killed me the moment I took off the dark matter.
A shudder worked itself out of me.
“What about school?” said Megan. “Are you still going to go? You can’t keep hiding forever.”
I moaned into my palms. “What am I going to tell my parents?”
“The truth, maybe? You think she’d attack you in broad daylight?”
“Around other people? I don’t know. I don’t know what it wants, if it’s trying to hide from people or not. Why would it? She could waltz right into a classroom and stab me in the chest. No one would know what happened. But I think being in crowds is a good idea, because she’d have to pass through people to get to me, which would give me some warning at least.”
“Here. You need this.” She detached a pocket pepper spray container from her keychain, colored an innocent bubblegum pink, and showed me how to work it. “Grip, flip up, press—”
“Megan!” I shielded my eyes.
“I’m just showing you,” she said, handing it to me.
I took it gratefully and slid it onto my own keychain. “This would have been useful with that rapist, you know . . . if we had made it invisible.”
“Yeah, should have thought of that. Don’t get caught with that at school, okay? It’s considered a weapon.”
I studied the pepper spray, feeling a twinge of unease. “I’m not going to have time to use this.”
Megan rubbed her ar
m through her sleeve. “What do you want to do, Leona?”
“There’s only one way to beat her,” I whispered. “Dark matter. I have to put it on and never take it off, so she can’t find me. But dark matter is what did this to her. That’s exactly what it wants. I mean, I slept with it on last night, Megan. I wore it for like eight hours, and I have no idea what that did to me. But It can’t be good. I think the longer you wear it, the more it gets into you and changes you.”
“Hmm.” Megan rolled her sleeve up again and rubbed her elbow.
“What?” I said. “Why do you keep checking your arm?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, scratching at something. “It’s still there.”
“What? What is?”
“The markings . . . from dark matter. They didn’t fade all the way this time.”
“Let me see.” I scooted forward.
She held her arm up to me, and at first I saw nothing. I pulled her closer, and then the light caught a row of symbols, a hint darker than her skin. Almost invisible. The symbols resembled Greek letters, made of curving lines and angles, so the whole sequence looked like an elaborate math formula.
An alien math formula.
“How long has it been?” I said. “They’re like bruises, so it takes a while, right?
“But I haven’t worn dark matter since . . . since we went to Tina’s party last weekend. A week ago. I thought they were gone, but I just noticed them again this morning.”
“You think they came back?”
“Or they’ve been there the whole time and I wasn’t looking closely.”
I tilted her wrist. “And it’s only here? Only on your arm?”
“No, it’s everywhere. I can feel it everywhere. It’s just visible on my arm. They’re changing too. Look.” She pointed at her elbow.
I looked. Sure enough, one of the symbols kept morphing, breaking apart and reforming into a different symbol each time. I watched for a few seconds, and the one next to it changed too.
“Megan, you need to get this checked out,” I said.
“Why?” she said, tugging her sleeve down to cover it. “You think it’s bad?”
“Get your mom to make you an appointment with a dermatologist,” I said. “Tell her you’ve been getting pimples lately, and you don’t want her to come. We’ll go in together. We need to get this checked out, Megan.”
Megan got the appointment for 4:30 p.m. on Monday.
I decided to go to school after all. I’d spent the entire weekend locked inside either Megan’s or my bedroom or one of our cars, and frankly, the prospect of faking an illness and being home alone all day terrified me, even it was the safest thing to do.
I wanted to be around other people.
So I darted between morning classes like a scared little bunny rabbit, my fist tight around the keychain pepper spray Megan had given me in the pocket of my hoodie. When the morning chill melted away, I was forced to strip down to my tank top and carry the keychain out in the open, brazenly swinging it around at freshmen who bumped me in the hall.
No one stopped me.
Between classes, I buried myself in the center of the thickest crowds, fighting my instincts to steer clear of them. I was safest in crowds. But even then, every blonde head made my insides go cold.
By the time English rolled around, I was a nervous wreck. I slid into my seat and watched the gaps between the incoming students in sheer terror. She could be there . . . or there . . .
The crowd parted, leaving an open path from the door straight to my desk. I flinched, expecting an attack.
None came.
Andrew gave me a weird look and caught the attention of Tina Wilkes—who sat directly behind me—with a knowing eye roll. I heard her whisper, “I know . . . seriously.”
My face flushed. I remembered what she said about me at the party last weekend. Girls kind of judge you if they see you with her.
Was that true? I peered around the classroom, and saw other eyeballs instantly flick away from me. Suddenly, I felt horribly self-conscious. They knew. They knew I’d killed Ashley and now they were talking about it behind my back. I turned forward and felt a rising knot in my throat. What if everybody knew and they just weren’t telling me?
You’re being paranoid, Leona.
More kids filed in, leaving more gaps—gaps that would fit a charging rhinoceros. With room to spare. I was so dead.
At last the door swung shut, and I let out my anxious breath.
But then, five minutes into class—“Are you guys hot?” Mrs. Holbrooke, our English teacher, fanned herself with a packet of paper. “You want me to open the door?”
Heads nodded vigorously.
I gaped at them, horrified. Were they crazy?
Mrs. Holbrooke ambled to the door and reached for the handle.
“Wait!” I called.
“No?” She turned back to us, hand on the handle. “You guys want it open or not?”
“Yes!” said Andrew, exasperated. “We want it open.”
Murmurs of agreement circled the classroom, fake gestures of wiping sweat off foreheads.
“Wait, can we just . . . can we keep it closed?” I said.
“Everyone else wants it open, Leona,” said Tina, her voice biting behind me.
“I’m cold,” I said, rubbing my arms for effect.
“Oh my God, just put on your sweatshirt if you’re cold,” said Tina.
“Why don’t we take a vote?” said the teacher. “Who wants it open?”
Every hand but mine shot up.
“Closed?” she asked next.
I didn’t bother raising my hand. She reached for the handle again.
“No!” I shouted. “I think we should keep it closed.” My comment earned angry mutters, and I pressed on, hot in the face. “I think it’s dangerous. We have an open campus, and that means anybody with a gun could just walk in here. What about school shootings?”
“Are you serious?” Tina said.
“Yes, I’m serious.”
“We’ll be fine.” Mrs. Holbrooke opened the door and propped it open.
Instant panic seized me. A cool draft of air blew into the classroom, raising goosebumps on my skin. I stared at the pathway outside the door, the grass gleaming in the sunlight, the little bird screeching and taking flight away from something invisible.
Mrs. Holbrooke resumed her lesson.
I couldn’t do this.
I stood up, pushed my desk aside with a loud scrape, and marched to the door. I kicked up the door stopper and tugged the handle until the door slammed shut, plunging the classroom into silence.
I returned to my desk, ignoring the stares.
“Leona, we decided we were going to have the door open,” Mrs. Holbrooke said slowly, her tone ominously calm.
“Then I have to go,” I said sharply. “If you leave the door open, I have to go.”
“I can write you a detention if you’d like?” She opened the door again and propped it open. “Are you ready to behave yourself?”
I stared with tunnel vision at the rectangle of blue sky.
Ashley would come now. While I was in English class.
I would slump forward out of the blue, and people would try to shake me awake . . . until they saw the blood pooling in my lap and dripping to the floor.
“I’m . . . I’m not feeling well,” I mumbled, climbing to my feet again. “I have to go.”
“Leona, if you walk out of my class one more time, I’m going to need to see a doctor’s note.”
I ignored her and staggered out into sunlight, into the vast high school campus, completely empty. Trash and dust blew in the wind, forming eddies in the long, abandoned wings. No crowds to hide me. Everywhere for her to hide
. She was invisible.
I started toward the parking lot, panic nipping at my heels. I had to leave, had to run. Megan’s car—maybe she’d left it unlocked.
Footsteps clomped behind me. I glanced back, saw no one.
My pepper spray. I patted my pockets, but I’d left my keys on my backpack in English. I couldn’t go back there. I hurried my pace.
The footsteps came closer, louder. I looked back again. No one there. The long concrete corridors amplified noises. Sounds ricocheted and seemed to come from all directions at once. I tripped over my heels, stumbled, and all at once took off running, gasping for breath. The patter of footsteps reacted instantly and bounded after me, closer and closer and closer—
I swung around a corridor at full speed and slammed into a guy walking the other direction.
I screamed.
My scream echoed.
“Leona, Leona, Leona,” Emory shouted, brushing my hair out of my eyes. His face hovered in front of me, blurry through tears. “It’s me . . . it’s just me.”
“She’s here,” I hissed, craning to look behind me. “She’s right behind me.” I moved forward again, bumping into him.
He took me by the shoulders. “Leona, stop, there’s no one else here. It’s just us. Listen.”
I listened. The campus was silent. Just the rustle of a chip bag sliding in the breeze.
“But . . . but I heard footsteps,” I stammered. “She was right behind me.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“But I heard her.” I let out a shiver.
“You heard your own echo. I heard that too. You sounded like the whole marching band.”
I looked up at him. “My echo?”
“Come here,” he said huskily, gathering me into a tight hug. The heat of his breath on my scalp only intensified my shiver. In his arms I felt hopelessly safe.
“Don’t ever leave me,” I moaned into his chest, squeezing his T-shirt in my fist. His spicy cologne filled my lungs and spread out in a warm pool deep in my stomach. I savored it. Why was I fighting this?
